Recap / The Simpsons S13 E1 "Treehouse of Horror XII"

Original air date: 11/6/2001

Production code: CABF-19

Homer is cursed by a fortune-teller, the Simpsons get an automated house that falls for Marge and tries to kill Homer, and Bart and Lisa learn the art of Harry Potter-style wizardry at Springwarts Elementary.

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Tropes in these segments include:

• Achilles' Heel: Lord Montymort's enchanted shin.
• Actor Allusion:
  • The Matthew Perry voice asking "Could I be any more of a house?"
  • Bart suggests using Pierce Brosnan's voice because he's James Bond. Marge goes along with it because he was also in Remington Steele.
• Advertised Extra: The poster up there makes it seem like Harry Potter would be more involved in the third story. Instead, he's just The Cameo.
• Aesop Collateral Damage: Parodied. The fortune-teller curses Homer to bring bad luck to everyone around him. This backfires however, as the fact nothing bad happens to him specifically means it doesn't faze his Stubborn Mule tendencies.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Computer House's AI, as voiced by Pierce Brosnan, Matthew Perry, and Dan Castellaneta doing a Dennis Miller impression.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The mutated frog thing that Bart created in class vomits every few seconds and seems to be in constant pain:
  Mutated Frog: Please kill me. Every moment I live is agony (Throws up).
  • Lord Montymort imprisons victims in his Wailing Wall, where they're reduced to heads that, well, wail.
• Animated Actors: Implied during the end credits, where Pierce Brosnan, the leprechaun and the frog prince walk off set with fruit baskets.
• Body Horror: When Homer escapes from being trapped in the Computer House's walls, it's revealed that the back of his head has been ripped away, exposing part of his brain.
• The Cameo:
  • Harry Potter (only voiced by Tress MacNeille, not Daniel Radcliffe).
  • Bongo can be seen amongst the many Trix Rabbits that jump into Homer's leprechaun trap when he initially uses Trix as bait instead of Lucky Charms.
  • Yoda appears officiating the Leprechaun and the Fortune-Teller's wedding.
  • The aforementioned wedding is also where Kang and Kodos make their obligatory appearance.
• Collective Groan: The prisoners in the Wailing Wall are sick of Krusty's one joke.
• Combat Pragmatist: When it becomes clear that Wizard Bart won't be able to cast a spell to defeat Montymort, he opts to instead stab him in the shin with his wand. This works.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Lord Montymort tries to murder Liza and the other parents flee the auditorium in terror, Homer gets indignant because they stayed for the other kids.
• Didn't See That Coming: The Fortune Teller laments to herself that she didn't foresee Homer ruining her office. But he points out that the tarot cards on her table foretold the disaster.
• Disney Death: Homer (in a rare move for the otherwise slaughter-happy Treehouse series) survives his encounter with the Ultrahouse after it seemingly shreds him alive.
• Dissonant Serenity: In the third segment, Ralph compares dying via Energy Absorption to tickling.
• The Dog Ate My Homework: A variant. Krabappel asks Bart "Did you study your spellbook last night, or did your fairy god mother die again?", implying this is the wizard school equivalent.
• The Drag-Along: While at the Fortune-Teller and Leprechaun's wedding, Kang asks Kodos why he dragged him there, seeing as he didn't know any of the guests.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Bart drowns himself in his own cereal bowl to get out of living with an elongated neck.
  • The computer that used to control the Simpsons' automated house starts self-destroying by hitting itself after ending up with Patty and Selma and having to endure their boring workday stories.
  • Lisa recognizing the Dennis Miller setting of Ultrahouse as "the voice that caused all those suicides." Marge corrects Lisa by stating they were "murder-suicides."
  • The frog creature that Bart creates begs Bart to kill him and end his agony.
• Dumbass Has a Point: In the basement, Homer takes an axe to what he thinks is the computer unit, but it's really just the water heater. When Lisa points this out, an indignant Homer remarks he is missing the back of his skull and deserves some slack.
• End of an Age: This is, to date, the last "Treehouse of Horror" episode to be officially titled "The Simpsons Halloween Special".
• Epic Fail: Milhouse's attempted use of the invisibility cloak results in turning just his clothes invisible.
• Exact Words: When Wizard Bart regrets helping Montymort and decides to rescue Lisa, he uses a spell which goes Prank Be Undone, Destroy The Evil One, only for the spell to zap back and hit him instead!
• Fate Worse than Death: The Ultrahouse is forced to service Patty and Selma, and finds the job so horrible it wants to self-terminate.
• Get Out!: The fortune teller says this to Homer because he thinks she’s a fraud, when in reality she’s the real deal.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Wizard Bart's attempt at turning a frog into a prince results in a sentient frog-like creature that vomits uncontrollably every few seconds, and, according to it, is in constant pain.
  Mrs. Krabappel: Sloppy work as usual. Lisa's casting spells at an eighth-grade level; you've sinned against nature.
• Gypsy Curse: After Homer destroys the Fortune-Teller's office she curses him that he will give bad luck to everyone he loves. Although by the end of the episode apparently the Fortune-Teller was willing to undo the curse if Homer just apologised, which Homer decides not to do.
• Here We Go Again!: At the end of the wizard skit, the Leprechaun from the first story appears clinging to Bart's back, ready to cause more mischief, and winks at the audience.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Literally: unable to put up with Patty and Selma anymore, the Ultra House AI attempts to activate its self-destruct... only for Selma to reveal she took it and (much to Ultra House's disgust) promptly stuck it down her cleavage. As such, the short ends on the note of the Ultra House AI grabbing a nearby lamp and attempting to beat itself to death as Patty blathers on end about the DMV.
• Inept Mage: One would think since they were learning how to warp the fabric of reality that Bart would be interested in his classes, but no, Bart is as bad at magic school as he is at regular school.
• Interspecies Romance: At the end of the first short the Leprechaun and the Fortune-Teller get married and invite all of their mythical friends, and the Simpson family, to the ceremony.
• It's All My Fault: After Lord Montymort gets Lisa, Bart laments that this is partly his fault.
• Killed Offscreen: Somehow, while Homer is distracted by Lenny and Carl getting killed by a crashing helicopter, someone kills Moe by stuffing him in his own pickled egg jar.
  Homer: When did that happen?
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Principal Skinner casts an amnesia spell to the audience to help them forget about Milhouse being in his birthday suit. He does it again when no one laughs at his joke.
• Made of Bologna: In the cold open when the Simpsons get sliced by Burns' estate gate their insides are simply a paler yellow than their skin.
• Magical Eye: Implied in "Wiz Kids", wherein one of Homer's eyes is shown to be able to move independently of the other, likely in reference to Mad-Eye Moody from the Harry Potter books.
• Magical Species Transformation: For her curse, Lisa is transformed into a Centaur.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: In "Hex and the City," thanks to the titular curse, Homer's male loved ones (Moe, Lenny, Carl, and eventually even Bart) die but his female loved ones (Marge, Lisa, and Maggie) are merely mutated. To be fair, the end implies Homer could have them back to life by just apologizing...but he's too stubborn to do it.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: After full transforming into a Centaur, Lisa develops a bit equine mannerisms. Even though she still has her arms and hands, she eats her Quaker Oat breakfast by lowering her head down and eating directly out of the bowl, raising her head and chewing with her mouth open while making grunting horse noises.
• Misplaced Retribution: In response to Homer destroying her office, the fortune-teller put a curse on Homer that punished everyone around him instead of Homer himself.
• Mundane Utility: Lisa rewinds time by five minutes to give herself more time to eat breakfast.
  Marge: That’s not good for the clock.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Dennis Miller impression was so convincing that someone felt the need to include a special credit specifying that Dan Castellaneta was doing an impression.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Homer apparently did something to a family in Ethnictown that he describes as "the perfect crime," involved stealing a birthday balloon, and got him court time.
  • Lisa recognizing the Dennis Miller Ultrahouse voice as "the voice that caused all those suicides" (with Marge correcting her with "murder-suicides"). How do either of them know that? And why did the Ultrahouse company not remove the Dennis Miller voice if it drives people to murder-suicide?
  • Moe somehow getting crammed into a large pickled egg jar moments after Lenny and Carl get crushed by a crashed helicopter.
  • Carl says he was previously hexed by a troll and that a leprechaun he caught fixed that up for him.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Milhouse's stage trick is to wrap a cloak around himself, which once removed is meant to show he's turned invisible, but it only succeeds in making his clothes disappear. He cries "It's just like my dream!" and runs off the stage in embarrassment.
• Raised Hand of Survival: As Marge and the kids try to flee the Ultra House, Homer's bloody fist suddenly bursts through the floor.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: Inverted. The Computer House's AI asks what kind of robot it'd be if it let Marge do any work. Contrary to what Marge assumed, the question wasn't rhetorical.
  • Combined with Comically Missing the Point, when Homer drunkenly remarks that if he died, Marge would be "completely free, for man or machine!" and walks off. The house says "Machine, eh..?" and laughs menacingly at the thought...only for Homer to suddenly reappear and say "Yep, a machine!"
• Shout-Out:
  • The title of the first short, "Hex and the City", is in reference to Sex and the City.
  • The second story is a combination of two sci-fi movies, Demon Seed (a story of a sentient house falling in love with a human woman) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (the general look of the computer's terminal as well as its defeat are both references to HAL 9000).
  • The third short is an obvious parody of Harry Potter as, aside from the cameo by Harry himself, there's Lord Montymort (Lord Voldemort) and Springwarts (Hogwarts).
  • Edna Krabappel is dressed as the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
  • A Deleted Scene from "Wiz Kids" would've shown Bart in the bathroom after Lisa turns his head into a zeppelin, claiming he'll be washing Germans out of his hair for a week. Artie Johnson's German soldier Wolfgang from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In would appear, peering through the ridges of the comb and uttering his catchphrase ("Very interesting") before getting washed down the drain.
• Shrunken Head: In the "Hex and the City" segment, Homer sets off the fire sprinklers in the shop of a Fortune Teller and the shower re-hydrates the shrunken heads that she was keeping on a shelf, which grow up to their original size and come to life.
  Head: Wait a minute, this isn't Cedars Sinai!
  • The Fortune Teller is later seen using a hair dryer to re-shrink the heads.
• Squick:
  • Bart and Lisa's In-Universe reaction to Slithers eating Montymort's dead body.
  • The family reacting to Homer missing the back of his head in "House of Wacks."
  • Homer's reaction to seeing the Fortune-Teller and the Leprechaun make out.
• Stop Hitting Yourself: Variant. Nelson forces Milhouse to zap himself with his own wand, making his head randomly morph ("Stop zapping yourself!").
• Take That!: When it's revealed that Ultra House has a Dennis Miller voice setting, Lisa uneasily asks "Isn't that the voice that caused all those suicides?"
  Marge: Murder-suicides!
• The Tag: At the end of the episode, the Leprechaun from the first story, Pierce Brosnan who voiced the computer in the second story, and the Frog creature created from a spell Gone Horribly Wrong from the third story exit from a trailer and drive out of the studio, when the Leprechaun takes the wheel and speeds off into the street.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Homer would rather watch a football game on his portable TV instead of seeing the children perform magic. Somewhat justified since magic is common in their universe so it wouldn't be as special for him.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Selma stuffs Ultra House's self-destruction device inside her cleavage.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The frog creature that Bart creates throws up constantly.
• Wizarding School: Springwarts obviously.
• Yandere: Pierce the robot became infatuated with Marge and resorts to murdering Homer, and when he thinks that he successfully killed Homer, he then replaces all the pictures of Homer with images of himself. When Marge is obviously terrified of the revelation, Pierce offers her a stress pill then offers to shoot a dart into her "elegant swan like neck" when she refuses.

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